G.R.O.S.S. Wins

Submit Your GROSS requestTo reduce unintended burdens for healthcare workers, Upstate is streamlining processes that add little or no value to patient care.

Upstate’s wellness initiative seeks input for a new program called GROSS: Getting Rid of Stupid Stuff. The program is endorsed by the American Medical Association and allows Upstate to qualify for the Joy in Medicine silver award. In the course of daily work, staff encountering a task, barrier or an outdated mandate that slows down work, submit a request here. The team will triage input and work to resolve issues with appropriate departments. View GROSS DATA

Questions? Email Joanna Suser at [email protected].

Successes

Suggestion	Solution
Please help with resident pharmacy orders. Pharmacy spends a lot of time making corrections and following-up	Pharmacy team trains new residents in common order entry problems. Training piloted in Neurology with good reception. Training now available to other departments.
Computers and printers in clinic are mismatched. Clinicians don’t know where to look for items they print. A lot of time is spent looking around.	IMT re-mapped all printers in the clinic. Each computer is labeled with the printer it goes to.
Required annual medical staff education is excessive	A full review of the education packet was completed by Beth Erwin, Nicole Cormier and Leslie Kohman and a significant amount of relevant material was moved to “supplemental” status. As a result, the majority of material in the packet directs those interested to these supplemental sources, and the number of pages to be reviewed was reduced by 12%.
IPAD charger blocks are often taken from the pts room. Is there a way to change out a plug outlet in the pts room to incorporate a usb charger?	IPAD chargers are being installed
The Clinical Launch Pad is disorganized and has outdated links	Clinical Launch Pad icons reorganized to alphabetical order. No duplicates were found, outdated links removed.
Medical students cannot access documents in CareEverywhere to help team access collateral information	Security was updated to allow medical students to access documents in Care Everywhere
Nurses must do depression screen on all patients arriving for routine outpatient surgical procedures	Requirements reviewed and bedside nursing can now bypass screening during routine care if there are no apparent concerns.
Cease the practice of sending 23.4% saline to the pharmacy lab for preparation and subsequent delivery to a neurocritical care unit, as it causes undesirable delays in patient care.	New process for DT pharmacy and 23.4% sodium chloride: 1. Pharmacy receives order in EPIC for dose. 2. Pharmacist prepares the first dose in the main pharmacy on the counter and affixes a 4 hour expiration time on it. 3. Dose is immediately run up to the floor after being drawn up and appropriately labeled. This bypasses the pharmacy IV lab (clean room) which requires multiple steps due to the sterile environment.